Mailing lists in Durham

CIS has introduced a service for managing and maintaining mailing lists at the University of Durham. The service uses a system called Majordomo. This system allows more sophisticated control over the use of mailing lists (e.g. determining who can join them and who can send messages to them) than our older in-house service. It should therefore prevent at least some instances of unsolicited and inappropriate 'junk mail'.

CIS has installed a WWW interface to Majordomo called MajorCool . This provides a user-friendly interface to Majordomo, especially for the operations performed by list-owners.

The code of conduct for the use of mailing lists at the University of Durham

Automatically generated Majordomo mailing lists

Some Majordomo mailing lists are automatically generated. Examples are a list of all members of academic staff, a list of all first year undergraduates, and so on. These are lists where the membership is determined on a regular basis by centrally held data and the set of people able to post messages to the lists is strictly controlled.

How to find out what Majordomo mailing lists are available at the University of Durham

You can find out what Majordomo mailing lists are available at the University of Durham by sending an email message to majordomo@durham.ac.uk where the body of the message contains the line: lists

You will get a message back from Majordomo telling you what lists are available. However, besides these lists, there will be other Majordomo mailing lists where the list-owner has chosen not to advertise the existence of the list.

How to find out who is on a particular Majordomo mailing list

You can find out who is subscribed to a particualr Majordomo mailing list by sending an email message to majordomo@durham.ac.uk where the body of the message contains the line: who listnamewhere listname is replaced by the name of the list .

You will get a message back from Majordomo telling you who is on the list listname .

How to join or leave a Majordomo mailing list

You can join or leave a Majordomo mailing list by sending an email message to majordomo@durham.ac.uk . To join a list, send the line: subscribe listnamewhere listname is replaced by the name of the list. To leave a list, send the line: unsubscribe listnamewhere listname is replaced by the name of the list.

How to find out which Majordomo mailing lists you are subscribed to

You can find out which Majordomo mailing lists you are subscribed to by sending an email message to majordomo@durham.ac.uk where the body of the message contains the line: which

How to create a new mailing list

Mailing lists are provided to support the work of the University. If you wish to create a new mailing list, you should:

How to maintain a Majordomo mailing list

List-owners may maintain their mailing lists using the Modify page of MajorCool . This page enables a list-owner to modify the list of subscribers, to change the configuration of the list, or to alter the info file that describes the purpose of the list. Further information about the configuration options which may be altered can be found on the WWW page containing details about Majorcool .